A rhythm is a succession, a row, a succession.

A series of strokes of a drumstick on a drum, of steps on a ground, of events, and these events can succeed each other in a regular or random way.

We plant a stick on the shoreline. We mark every time a wave comes to touch it, every time it is lapped by the waves of the sea.

This is a rhythm, ordering natural events.

We represent the occurrence of each event with a light signal placed on the stick we planted.

So let us plant 9 more sticks, at a certain distance from each other and from the first one and also apply the dim light of an LED to these.

Each of them will signal when the stick itself is touched by a sea wave.

If we stand a little apart until we own all our sticks with our gaze, we can see like so many fireflies on the seashore, like a choreography of lights, but we know that these lights make the rhythmic and continuous movement of the sea obvious to us. They are pseudo-random events that signal to us, but they are a rhythm, marking and accompanying the passage of time.

In the 1970s and 1980s, composer Albert Mayr collected fragments of rhythmicities observed in various places, translating the idea of object trouvés into the temporal field. Onde Marine was one of these rythmes trouvés: the times when, in a 15-minute time span, 3 sticks planted on the beach, in Pisa, were reached by the waves of the sea, on December 21, 1982, were recorded.

“Meditation on Sea Waves” uses and interprets Mayr’s score to create a simple and delicate situation to meditate on the rhythm and passage of time.

A video installation created by Mechi Cena, Francesco Michi, Francesco Pellegrino.